I noticed something odd today. We're like already at the halfway point? Of the movie, at least, but that's so weird! I feel like it has just started and gotten nowhere yet. I am also surprised to find that I am still pretty loyal to the movie, despite all the changes I have made. It's odd. This whole thing is odd. I feel odd.

DISCLAIMER: yup, I checked. Definitely do not own Death Note or any of its original characters or plotlines. But my OC's are mine, so yay, I guess. Also, I am a typo manic, so I would not recommend my stories if you are against those.

XxX

9. Over

'I… I never told Matsuda my real name,' Nanase said, staring at the table were the classified belongings of the two people we'd lost were laying. 'I had not told the Chief, either, but… Matsuda was my friend. He had a right to know.'

Kuromoto took a step towards her and lay his hand on her shoulder, squeezing it. I was the only one in the room who was sitting, in a corner, wrapped in someone's coat.

'Damn Kira!' Nanase said, her tears slipping from her eyes again. She had only just stopped crying. 'When my brother—'

'Don't,' Mishima said coldly, staring at the table as well.

Everyone looked up to stare at him, but he met no one's glare. Instead of the others, I found myself looking away, to the ground. All our shoes were so clean. But what about our hands. Whose blood did we carry with us, whose blood got stuck on our hands, under our nails?

'We remain anonymous,' Mishima added. I now realised it was not cold. It was monotone because of all the emotions he was trying to keep in, the blood he was trying to hide. 'That is our rule.'

'I know…' Nanase said, her tears already drying again. She had already cried so, so much. Still, her words held something of her stubbornness, her unwillingness to except the situation. The rules.

'Being anonymous… protects you, protects us, during the Death Note investigation,' Kuromoto said softly.

'It can't be helped,' Uragami added.

The silence lasted as we all waited for Nanase to accept the harsh reality. But when she spoke, she still sounded stubborn. Stubborn, but strong. Determined. 'When the Notes are contained and all of this is over,' she said, 'I want to call all of you by your real names.'

Another silence. Another hit for me as I realised that would never happen to me. Not as long as I decided to still help L, be his new Watari. But after all this… I wasn't sure if I could anymore. How many people had I lost since meeting him? How many of it had been his fault? How many had been mine?

'We will secure all the Death Notes,' Mishima said, copying Nanase's determination. 'We will put an end to this.'

Detective Arai said down in the chair next to me with a sigh, just as the sound of people came from the hallway, the footsteps getting louder as they approached the meeting room.

Chief Sugawara came in, followed by a horde of police officers, all familiar yet strange faces. 'You failed big time,' he announced, not seeming too bothered by the loss, only by our failure. Every single one of us seemed to cringe as he said that, even detective Arai. 'I will supervise the Death Note investigation from now on. The Task Force is decommissioned.'

'But!' Mishima begun, clearly angry about this.

But there was nothing to say. For our leader was dead.

'It's out of your hands, officers,' Chief Sugawara said, pity in his voice. Pity and shame. For he had failed, too. 'A Death Note can manipulate people. I never used a fake name. So what if one day I blow myself up and kill you all?'

Mishima had this weird habit when he got so angry that he couldn't control his voice. If he got really, really angry, he seemed to be almost smiling. 'That won't happen,' he said, the smile in his voice as well, 'the Death Note rules dictate that deaths are one to one.'

'You, always talking about rules! Who the hell cares?!' Chief Sugawara shouted, filling the empty void that had been hanging around us. For the first time, he seemed genuinely upset. This was the first time he seemed… human. 'Forget the rules! We followed the rules and looked what happened!'

Mishima had nothing to say to that; this man was his superior after all. And he was not wrong. Still, when Chief Sugawara said: 'We will be securing the Death Note,' Mishima got angry once again: 'What the hell does that mean?!'

'That's confidential!' Chief Sugawara shouted back. 'You are not part of this case anymore, Mishima.'

That fact seemed to register only now. Mishima his expression fell, as if he himself fell off a building and just realised that there was no way he was going to survive. Even Chief Sugawara could tell that Mishima had been defeated. 'Shut this down,' he said determinedly. As the officers he brought accepted his order and started emptying the office, he left. And we were just standing around our meeting room, watching our hard work being destroyed.

That is, until Mishima kicked a chair. And angrily hung over the table, seeming pissed. I had never seen him this passionate. It was kind of refreshing.

And then, for some reason, I was applauding.

It wasn't the good kind. It was the slow, cynical kind. 'Bravo,' I said, even my voice sounded numb. 'Mishima finally snapped, glad to have seen it at least once.'

He looked straight at me then. The anger still there. And then he stepped towards me, his face determined. He grabbed my sweater and pulled me up, hard and aggressively. 'You!' he said, spitting it out like a swearword.

'Mishima!' Nanase said, a warning in her voice.

'Do it,' I spat back as I read the intention in Mishima's eyes. 'Punch me in the face. Do it. Come on. I know you have been wanting it since the day I came walking in here.'

'Guys…' Kuromoto said.

'I never—' Mishima stopped himself. Then let me go. He had pulled me up so much that I suddenly felt tinier when my feet fully reached the ground again.

Mishima turned away from me, to his computer, ignoring the officers that were clearing the place out completely, like we all had. They seemed to be doing the exact same thing, after all.

I sighed, adjusted my clothes, when the truth came sinking in. Chief Sugawara had fired the task force, yes, but he had not been the one to hire me in the first place. 'Let me say this,' I said, my voice still sounding empty. 'I am not an official Task Force member, they cannot pull me off the case.' I stared at Nanase, still upset, than I looked over at Uragami and Kuromoto, both looking down at the ground. 'I will finish this,' I said, my years with L resonating in my voice. 'I will put an end to this. For Matsuda. For… Soichiro.'

XxX

When the officers had left, no one told us to leave the building, so I stayed. I tried to rummage through every computer and desk, searching for as much information I could gather. It was at this time that Arma appeared again, her dark eyes sad.

'Are you alright?' she asked me, clearly not worried about that currently.

'As long as I am keeping myself busy, I am fine,' I replied, focused on the computer screen in front of me. 'Have you found him yet?'

'I am afraid not. And now that we know he is, in fact, the current owner of my Note, we will need to agree and confirm something,' she explained, immediately getting down to business.

'About what, exactly?' I asked.

'About how I am to retrieve ownership over my Death Note,' she replied.

I frowned as I realised that yes, indeed, we had not a very clear plan for that. Killing him would be the easiest way, of course, but what if that was not an option? We could hardly force him to give up ownership, if he was anything like Light, he never would. 'Yeah, well, about that…'

'Are you talking to yourself?'

Arma disappeared before I could even stop her. I had been hunched over the screen, too restless to sit down, so I only had to turn to see Mishima standing in the doorway, looking at me with a slight frown on his face. He had changed his outfit, was no longer wearing the one he wore during… the incident. He was now wearing grey sweatpants and a dark blue sweatshirt. And his hair was damp, as if he had showered before coming here.

Which probably meant that he had. Which meant he had left… and came back. For what?

'What are you doing here?' I asked instead of answering his previous question.

Mishima dragged a hand through his hair, wiping it away from his face, and walking inside, clearly trying to look casual while actively failing to do so. 'I… I thought about some things and I think… I think I am with you on this one.'

I must have shown an absolutely baffled expression, because Mishima's lingering frown deepened. 'What?' he asked.

'You said something nice to me,' was my response.

He tilted his head to the side and eyed the screens, probably realising what I had been up to. 'I do that more often than you seemed to realise,' he said, his eyebrows now pulled up, as if he realised he was frowning and wanted to change that habit.

I looked down without answering, knowing he was right. We had always been so focused on disliking each other that we had both been blind for the moments when we were actually sort of nice to each other. 'I am truly sorry, for what it matters,' Mishima said then, approaching until he was only one step away from me. 'You knew them better than any of us. I think you are probably having the hardest time right now.'

He put his hand in his neck, his expression suddenly becoming awkward. 'Also because of everything you have been going through with…' He stopped, closed his mouth. Opened it again, reconsidered. Then added: 'With… you know.'

'I do know,' I agreed, smiling unconvincingly. I wasn't used to it yet. Being nice to Mishima. Not that there was any reason so now. We wouldn't we working together anymore. I needed to contact Ico, come up with a plan. And I needed to decide for myself if I was going to finish this with or without L. As long as Near was there, I was not sure I could do it with L. Ico and Arma… they were the only ones I had. Without them… I would be alone.

Just like Misa was alone without me. Without Light. Maybe she had not been acting weird. Maybe she'd just been lonely.

'Everything okay?' Mishima said when he noticed that I was staring off into space.

A very similar question to the one Arma asked me, just a few minutes ago. So why then, was talking with an anti-social Shinigami easier than talking with Mishima? What made him such an impossible creature to talk to? 'I am perfectly peachy,' I replied in English, because that was not awkward at all.

Lucky enough for me, Mishima knew enough English to understand that statement. Or he just pretended. Whatever it was, he was not going to ask about it and I suddenly wanted to leave very badly. Instead of thinking up an excuse, since I knew he would know my real reason, I just said: 'I will be leaving now.' I took the papers I had collected and my usb drive with me as I headed towards the door.

'Are you in love with him?'

I stopped. Froze. Dropped the papers. Dropped everything. Including my face I had kept in perfect shape until now. I felt red anger, sadness and pain on my face. I felt my eyes watering. I felt too much all at once and it did not seem right. Still, Mishima did not let it go.

Instead, he asked: 'Are you?'

It took a while before I could turn around to face him, I had to get some of my emotions under control first. Still, I knew I was blushing when I asked: 'And what if I was?'

'Well,' Mishima replied awkwardly, clearly not prepared for this response. 'I think you should not be.'

'Because?'

'It's not healthy.'

He had no idea how right he was. The image of Ryuzaki surrounded by sweets popped into my head, but for once, it did not make me smile. I was unsure if I would ever be able to sincerely smile again after all this. All my main expressions just felt… exhausted. Used. Empty.

'I'm sorry,' Mishima said when I did not responded to his last statement. 'I shouldn't have said anything, should I? I just made you uncomfortable.'

'Was that not your intention?' I asked, knowingly awkward and hurtful.

'For once, no,' he replied honestly. 'I have just been… worried about you, lately. That's all.'

I frowned. And was kind of glad I already dropped all of my thing. Because honestly, how else was I supposed to react? 'Worried,' I repeated, even the word sounded strange in this situation.

Mishima nodded.

'About me?' I asked, my voice becoming higher as my confusion got the better of me.

Mishima nodded once again.

'Why?' I then asked, sounding more like a damsel from one of those old movies than an actual person. Confusion mixed with exhaustion and a lot of emotions I did not know how to handle, probably. There was no other way to describe the sound that came from my mouth.

I was surprised that Mishima even understood the little word I managed to get out. 'I don't know, I just felt that way,' he said with a shrug.

I should not be that surprised. He had picked me up with his car in the middle of a rainy night, he had seen me at a lot of bad moments the past few days. So, I should not be surprised. And yet I was. And as I stared at him in confusion, I realised there was something else, something more. Something incredibly dangerous.

So I immediately closed the drawer that Mishima had somehow managed to open and tried to forget that that drawer even existed. I had to do that. 'So, why did you come back?' I asked again, not sure if I had gotten an answer already.

'At first I came back because I was angry,' he said, his tone once again monotone. 'Then I calmed down and walked in to gather as much information as possible to still continue something similar to an official investigation.' He had been looking at his feet more than at me when he spoke, but now he looked up, facing me. 'And when I saw you I came in because I wanted to help you.'

'With what?' I asked, the need to run away returning.

'You work with L, yes?'

I suppose that was not wrong, but… 'Well, yes,' it sounded more like a question, though.

'But you are in love with him.' He'd said it as if it was a dirty, wrong thing. A mistake that I made.

'And I am in love with him,' I corrected, now sure why I was defending myself. I already knew full well what it meant to be in love with Ryuzaki and honestly, was Mishima wrong that he said it as if it were a stupid, dumb thing?

I wasn't sure anymore.

'But he is not in love with you,' Mishima said, a question hidden in a statement, though the statement was not brought with a lot of confidence. As if he knew he had already lost and still went on fighting anyway.

'Maybe,' I responded with a sigh, not sure why I was actually having this conversation with my most hated co-worker. Probably because I did not know him well and we did now have any sort of relationship to speak of. I was not ruining anything, nor bringing anything in danger by talking to him like this.

And I had not talked to anyone who behaved like a human in what felt like years. It seemed like I kept surrounding myself with people so odd they might as well have been aliens. I live on earth, but amongst the aliens. That was what it felt like. The only question was, was I an alien, too, or not? Was I just pretending to be something I am not?

Mishima, all the while, seemed to be stressing over something I said. 'You mean that he is in love with you?' he said, the surprise clearly in his voice, making it higher. I could almost imagine what he sounded like in his teenage years, cracking voice and all.

'Probably,' I answered, still not sure how I was supposed to answer that in a way that felt truthful enough. A simple "yes" or "no" did not fit the way Ryuzaki treated me at all.

Mishima was frowning now and I could almost see the wheels in his head turning and twisting as he was trying to think.

The drawer rumbled. And a smile escaped. 'Don't break your brain, Mishima,' I said, the smile in my voice. And then I caught myself. One of my hands slipped to my mouth, wiping the smile away.

It was only then that Mishima noticed all the papers on the floor. With a sigh, he stepped forward. 'Clumsy,' he said, his old manners shining through.

I knelt down along with him, picking up papers as he was doing it, too. And then it became a match. Before we knew it, we fell back in the old habit of competing. And we were silently fighting for who could pick up the most papers. In my head, I could see it in a television series, or romantic comedy. We would accidently pick up the last piece of paper at the same time and we would look and each other and know that the other had the power to change their life forever.

Only this was not a romantic comedy.

And I was already in love with someone else.

'Can I ask you something?' Mishima asked as he picked up the last pieces of paper, me having retracted my hands seconds before.

'Hm?' I asked, vaguely absent.

'If you had other options, would you consider it?' he asked, again falling back on trying to be casual. He actual managed better this time. Or maybe it was just my imagination.

'What are you talking about?' I asked, feigning innocence.

'Would you consider… me?' he then asked, his eyes meeting mine, our faces close together. My mind flickered back to the romantic comedy and I could picture it so clearly that I eyes hurt. We would work at the Japanese Police Force together. His dedication and my hard work would make us famous. We could not work together, of course, but even complete strangers would know about the legendary couple, the officers who got everything done. We could live in Mishima's tiny apartment, we working in the small living room, he in his own little office. We could get married in the little church Sanami took me to every Christmas and we could move to a safer village were we got kids. They would go to school and never even know all the trauma their mother went through. The misery would come to an end.

But… I did not deserve any of that. Me, who had protected and loved criminals and who had thought and done more than enough bad things… How could I ever deserve to live such a life. How could I ever want to live such a live? I would never have a movie night with Ryuzaki, never see my children going off to school. I would probably be dead before anything like that could happened.

Small little specks of sorrow fell down on the papers in my hand as my shoulders started to tremble. As I realised that there was a part of me, however small it was, that wanted that save and happy life. A part of me, a drawer, that wanted to take Mishima's hand and force the rest of my being into loving him. But that was not falling in love. That was pushing yourself into loving something because it was easier.

'Miss Upson?' Mishima said, clearly surprised by my upset reaction. And then panic came: 'What's going on?'

'What did you do to her?'

My shoulder stilled, my tears seemed to freeze on my face. A shadow from the hallway fell on the floor, the papers, us. Even without that shadow I knew who it was. For there was only one person that smelled like strawberry cake and chocolate sauce and cinnamon cookies.

'N-n-n-nothing!' Mishima sputtered, straightening himself. 'She just… she suddenly…'

A cold hand grabbed my upper arm and pulled me up, against him. My vision was blurry because of the tears, but I could tell that Ryuzaki's face looked like it was made of stone. Mishima seemed to realise only now that he had no idea who was standing in front of him. 'W-wait, but who are you…?'

Ryuzaki looked down at me, then said with an old yet familiar fake accent: 'I am Suzuki, head of the Kira Investigation public information division. And I will be taking miss Upson with me for an emergency meeting, so if you don't mind.' He grabbed the papers from Mishima, and the usb drive that was still laying on the floor. Looked back at Mishima, narrowed his eyes and pulled me with him, all the while I was standing there face flushed and tears in my eyes and Mishima was having a hard time not blinking.

Only when Ryuzaki had put me in the car, Watari behind the wheel, did I manage to blink enough times to clear my head. Anger arrived shortly after. 'How dare y—'

Ryuzaki pulled me against his shoulder, but only so he could keep me still and cover my mouth with his hand to keep it shut. 'To headquarters, Watari,' he ordered, his usual, casual tone had returned.

'Of course, sir,' Watari responded, surprisingly cool and calm considering the circumstances. I thought he would at least be more surprised.

I frowned angrily, completely bend on being difficult all the way through. But then I noticed Ryuzaki's face in the mirror and I realised… he looked everything but calm and casual. He looked… bothered. Like, really bothered. And then I knew that he had not just been asking Mishima what he had done to me. He had known. Because he had been there.

And he had heard everything.

XxX

I feel like I have been having phrasing issues for a while now. Also, this chapter took so long! I had planned it out completely and usually this means that it goes quickly, but I still had to spent a lot of time on this. Maybe it's because I am still a bit tired and also still trying to get over a cold. Also, documentary deadlines are not fun.

Another thing that I want to talk about is love triangles. This may be a bit spoilery, but I did not use Mishima to make a love triangle. I used him to make sure that when Allison chooses L, she chooses him because she wants to, not because there are no other options. A life with L is not normal, so I want her to choose that life while having an open alternative. That was sort of what I was doing with that, but it's up to you whether I succeeded or not (once the story's finished, of course).

Anyway, thank you for reading! I hope I will be able to update sooner rather than later, but we'll have to wait and see.

XxX

REVIEW REPLIES

lunamoon531: Because I put the whole "Near cheats" thing in the previous story, it seemed unfair to just glance over it and not bring that back in some capacity. And whenever I have time, I am on this site a lot, too, so I get what you mean! I am always reading something if I am not writing or working on school stuff. Thank you for reading once again and have a lovely week! Cheers!

XxX